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lY THE UNITED STATES 
F AMERICA ENTERED 
THE WAR 



By 



GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE 

Professor in the 
University of Tennessee 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



PRICE TWOPENCE 



WHYTHE UNITED STATES 

OF AMERICA ENTERED 

THE WAR 



By 

GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE 

Professor in the University of Tennessee 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 






^''^-^ 



^^ ^^ No man can be glad that such thmgs have hap- 
pened as we have witnessed in these last fateful 
years, but perhaps it may be permitted to us to be 
glad that we have the opportunity to show that the 
prijtciples we profess are living principles, ajtd to 
have a chance by pouring out our blood and treasure 
to vindicate the things which we have professed. 
The real fruition of life is to do the things we have 
said we wished to do. There are tunes when words 
seem empty and 07tly action seems great. Such a 
time has come, and in the Providence of God 
America will once more have an opportunity to show 
to the world that she is born to serve ma7tkind.^\ — 
President Wilson, in his Address on Memorial Day, 
May 30th, 19 1 7. 



L^ 






WHY THE UNITED STATES OF 

AMERICA ENTERED 

THE WAR 

AMERICANS are by temperament and habit 
a peaceful, kindly people. They dislike a 
"fuss". The average American business 
man is cheerful, hospitable, generous, and fond of 
a chat and a joke. When he wants excitement, he 
goes to a political meeting or a baseball game, or 
scans the brisk headlines of his daily newspaper 
with an air of shrev/dly sceptical concern. He 
works hard and zealously for commercial success, 
but meets the competition of his rivals in an 
amiably sporting spirit. To his friends he is almost 
passionately loyal; through good report and bad 
report they are his friends, and that is enough for 
him. He is an indulgent husband and father, is 
quite sure that his home town possesses superlative 
merits, and calls his native land "God's country". 

Pacific and prosperous as he is, and uneasily 
sensitive to any attempt, either from within or from 
without, to commit the United States to a foreign 
policy that may involve it in difficulties, he argues 
that George Washington is a good man "to tie to," 
and that the advice of the first American President 
to his country to avoid entangling alliances with 
Europe is "good enough for him". For himself, 
he believes in free opportunities, a "square deal," 
and the democracy of liberty and fellowship, and 
he likes to believe that that spirit is growing every- 

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WHY THE UNITED STATES 

where. But he rather suspects that there are places 
and countries where it is not very well understood, 
or where its growth is checked by intolerant 
exploiters of the people in the guise of kings, 
politicians, or professional militarists. Well, 
Lincoln sagaciously said that you couldn't fool all 
of the people all of the time, and it must be that the 
people everywhere will sooner or later find their 
way to freedom. Meanwhile the good old U.S.A. 
can keep on setting a sound example. One prac- 
tical thing she can do, however — and he takes 
great pride in helping her to do it — she can show 
the world that in spite of her political isolation her 
heart is in the right place, by giving aid freely and 
generously whenever necessity requires it, to any 
branch of the human family that is suffering from 
sudden disaster or acute privation. For if freedom 
is our friend's first word, humanity is his second. 
Uncle Sam is jealously independent, no doubt, but 
he is also incurably benevolent. 

These ideals of our friend the business man 
find ready counterparts in the other classes and 
categories existing in American society — the doctor, 
the lawyer, the journalist, the college professor. 
Indeed, all American types tend to think of the 
Republic as a free, humane, progressive exemplar 
for the coming of the new social and political order 
in the world at large. 

These values have always been latent in the 
national consciousness of America. Since August, 
19 14, however, as she has watched the course of 
events in Europe and the Near East there has 
gradually come into her mind a new conviction ; 

4 



ENTERED THE WAR 

that it is not enough to sympathise and to hope, 
but that in order to be true to her own truth she 
must lay her all upon the altar of liberty, and must 
accept her active share of the world's suffering and 
struggle, if she is to keep her national ideals un- 
tarnished and to secure their enlightening influence 
upon the still unfree. Service — in whatever form 
conditions may require it — service in freedom's 
cause, she has come to see, is the price that must 
constantly be paid for the maintenance of freedom. 
It is interesting to observe the progress of the 
public attitude in the United States toward the 
war, from the academic, pacific stage; through the 
stage of a steadily increasing concern; into the 
present stage of aggressive resistance to the. Prus- 
sian effort to crush the power of the free peoples. 
As I, write, there lie before me three letters, from, 
three American university men, all of them close 
students of history and politics. It will be worth 
while quoting from these three letters in the order 
in which they were written. The first letter repre- 
sents the first mood or stage mentioned above, and 
the salient passage in. it runs as follows : — 

" Personally, my heart cries out against every 
form of warfare except the higher warfare of the 
Spirit against war, and especially the cause of 
war. England's greatest human asset is that 
upon the whole the peace- and liberty-loving 
peoples of the earth trust her and fear Germany. 
In the long run the meek and the loving will 
inherit the earth, and all conquests where might 
seems to overcome right are worst of all for the 

5 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

conquerors. But so long as nations and 
individuals fight instead of co-work, we can at 
least expect the defeat of the very worst and the 
success of all that will best serve to bring about 
in the end the verv best." 

The second letter contains the following 
vigorous words : — 

"You ask how I feel about the U.S.A. and 
the war. My thoughts and feelings have exactly 
paralleled those of Woodrow Wilson, and I 
think his have paralleled those of the majority 
of us. As I size us up, we are an idealistic 
people tempered with a good deal of prag- 
matism. It w^as our pragmatism that kept us out 
of the war when we might have entered, and now 
it is our idealism that has taken us into it when 
we might keep out. The fact is we have never 
really been in doubt as to the issue ; that is why 
we have not hastened to enter. Could we have 
foreseen that without our assistance the war 
would drag on for three years and take such a 
heavy toll of life and property I believe we 
would have entered when Belgium was invaded. 
You see, when the war broke like a bolt out of a 
clear sky we were all so surprised that we didn't 
know what to think or do — complete ' unpre- 
paredness ' for anything of the sort — and the 
first thing that came to mind was the thing oftenest 
dinned into our ears — Washington's advice to 
beware of entangling alliances with Europe. 
Of course, we thought that it would all be 
over in about three months, and that the Powers 

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ENTERED THE WAR 

would kiss and make up — in which case it 
would be best for us to keep out of a family 
quarrel. Then matters dragged along, the 
Germans playing a brand of international 
politics we knew nothing about, until finally 
there was no escape from the conclusion 
that they are modern Huns, heedless of law 
and virtue, inventors and practisers of new 
and fearful forms of vice. Prussianism has com- 
mitted suicide, and it is good for the world that 
it has. It is only a question of days before we, 
too, shall enter the war, and I know it will not be 
a half-hearted entrance." 

The third letter puts its seal to the irresistible 
American movement for the championing of inter- 
national liberty, in this terse but expressive 
manner : — 

" Every man here who is a man is now ready 
to do his utmost to help bring about the defeat 
of Germany and her Allies, and the political and 
militaristic ideas w^hich they represent.'' 

Still a fourth letter comes, this time from a 
business man in Wyoming : — 

" The whole West was on the tiptoe of expecta- 
tion for months before war was declared, and 
v/hen Wilson made his speech to the Congress, 
there was an explosion of approval and 
patriotism. Every house in the West was ablaze 
with flags, and the people came together in 
great meetings in every village, hamlet and cross- 
roads in the state. Hundreds of our young men 

7 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

are going away to the camps. It is a most 
popular war. We have a large German popula- 
tion even here in this little town, but they all 
attend our war meetings with enthusiasm, and if 
they have any thought against the programme, we 
do not hear it. 

" The people are not taking it out in talk 
either, for every man, woman, and child has 
work to do. The women and little children are 
working gardens; the men of war age are pre- 
paring their business in order to enlist as soon 
as the Government gets ready for them; and the 
old men are working in the fields with hoe and 
shovel, and blessing the privilege of adding their 
bit to the great work before the nation." 

It is undoubtedly true that American neutrality 
toward the Entente Alliance has been benevolent 
from the beginning, nor could it have been other- 
wise, on account of the historical ties of reciprocal 
understanding and helpfulness which have for so 
long bound the United States to France, and on 
account also of the sometimes unrecognised but 
always silently strong sense of kinship that the 
national consciousnesses of Great Britain and 
America have cherished and maintained. When 
one considers how closely tied England and 
America are by their possession of a common 
language, a common literary and religious heritage, 
a common fundamental law, similar social and 
political ideals (constantly tending toward greater 
likeness), and by a common necessity for reaching 
just, wise, and effective solutions of the problems 



ENTERED THE WAR 

which must be faced in the working out of these 
ideals, one cannot fail to be impressed with the 
conviction that it is the "manifest destiny" of these 
two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race to co- 
operate more and more definitely and sympathetic- 
ally in their future international undertakings. 

Although the American soul was deeply stirred 
by the invasion of Belgium, by the German atroci- 
ties that followed, by the sinking of the hapless 
Litsitmua and many other vessels under circum- 
stances of calculated heartlessness and violation of 
international law; although the American imagina- 
tion responded with enthusiasm to the magnificent 
gallantry of the Allied forces on land and sea ; yet 
the American mind, precisely because of its rela- 
tive isolation and of its composite character, moved 
slowly toward the thought of active participation 
in the war. It is important to recognise that the 
cosmopolitan population of the United States 
includes many millions of people who are not of 
Anglo-Saxon origin. 

The thirteenth official census of the United 
States, taken in 19 lo, shows a total population of 
91,972,266. Of this number 13,515,886 (or 14.7 
per cent.) are recorded as being of foreign birth; 
12,916,311 (or 14 per cent.) were native whites of 
foreign parents; and 5,981,526 (or 6.5 per cent.) 
were native whites of mixed (native and foreign) 
parentage. Of the total foreign-born population 
of 13,515,886, the highest percentage (18.5 per 
cent.) came from Germany, while 12.4 per cent, 
came from Austria. 

Of the total foreign white stock in the United 

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WHY THE UNITED STATES 

States in 19 lo, numbering 32,243,382, there were 
8,282,618 (or 25.7 per cent.) persons in the United 
States having Germany as their country of origin. 
This number comprised 2,501,181 born in Ger- 
many, 3,911,841 native born of German parents, 
and 1,869,590 native born of one German parent 
and one American. This reckoning excludes per- 
sons of "mixed foreign parentage, "by which is meant 
persons whose parents are of different nationalities 
but neither of whom is a native American. There 
were 2,001,559 (6.2 per cent.) white persons in the 
United States having Austria as their country of 
origin. This number compiised 1,174,924 born in 
Austria, 709,070 native born of Austrian parents, 
and 117,565 native born of one Austrian parent and 
one American. 

In addition to the foregoing there were in 19 10 
9,827,763 negroes and 412,546 persons of other 
coloured races in the United States, making a grand 
total of persons not Anglo-Saxon in their immediate 
origin of 42,654,032 (or 45.6 per cent.). It is inter- 
esting and important to note also that the proportion 
of foreign-born white persons, together^ with native 
whites of foreign or mixed parentage, is more than 
50 per cent, of the total population in the States of 
New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- 
necticut, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, 
Utah, and North and South Dakota. In all of the 
Western States save those named above, and New 
Mexico and Kansas, the proportion varies from 35 
to 50 per cent. In the Southern States it is less than 
5 per cent. 

The following urban statistics strikingly illus- 

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ENTERED THE WAR 

trate the social and political values arising out of 
the situation suggested above, when it becomes 
intensified in some of the largest cities in the United 
oiares . Kativ^ 

Total popula- Native whites f Foreig^n. Foreign. 

tion according wliites of ^ ■ '^ born whiles born whites 

to the Census native oregi natives of natives of 

New York °'""' P"""""^"^"- p°/r"nt'age. Geanany. Austria. 

City 4,766,883 921,318 1,820,141 278,114 190,237 

Chicago, 

Illinois .... 2,185,283 445,139 912,701 182,281 132,059 
Philadelphia, 

Pa 1,549,008 584,008 496,785 61,467 19,857 

Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin .. 373^857 78,823 182,530 64,816 11,553 
Cincinnati, 

Ohio ........ 363^591 154,937 132,190 28,425 1,638 

In view of this manifest variety in the origin and 
psychology of the American individual, we may well 
ask ourselves what precisely were the considerations 
that solidified popular sentiment in the United 
States to such an extent that eventually American 
participation in the war became to Americans not 
only desirable but unescapable. In answering this 
question we shall do well to recognise the distinction 
between cause and occasion. A cause, if it remain 
active and persistent, must sooner or later bring 
about its necessary result, but that result is often 
hastened and assisted by the existence of what 
may be called quickening occasions. There is no 
doubt in the writer's mind that the United States 
of America entered the world war primarily on 
account of her devotion to the cause of human free- 
dom, and that, should the war last long enough, 
America was predestined to enter it from the first. 
True, a recent American writer insists that "passive 
inspiration is her role, as it is conceived by her 

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WHY THE UNITED STATES 

citizens, and as her Government has again and again 
interpreted it. Pressed, she will insist upon rights, 
will even declare herself the champion of other 
nations' rights. But so long as she is left to her own 
devices, she will stand apart and offer herself as a 
golden example to a bitter world." 

But while this has not been wholly untrue of the 
United State's in the past, it is apparent that it was 
less than true in 1898, when the national spirit 
demanded action for the emancipation of Cuba. No 
doubt this determination was partly due to the 
feeling that the opportunity might be conscientiously 
seized for further conserving the interests of the 
Monroe Doctrine, beside satisfying the dictates of 
humanity, but those who know America and con- 
sider the course she took with her "conquests" on 
that occasion believe that her guiding principle — ■ 
the service of humanity — perhaps never before so 
strikingly controlled her morals and her decisions. 

That brief flash of war, however, was merely 
symptomatic of the widening ideals of the maturing 
Republic. Despite her relative unfamiliarity with 
European conditions and despite her traditional 
aversion to assuming an active partnership in the 
proceedings of European nations, she has now 
actually made what Kipling rightly calls 

" the eternal choice . 

Of good or ill . . . . 

" In the Gates of Death rejoice ! • 
We see and hold the good — 
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice 
For Freedom's brotherhood." 
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ENTERED THE WAR 

The United States would have made her choice 
even earlier had she not been faced with the problem 
of overcoming her own rather superstitious but 
easily understandable devotion to the idea of a self- 
sufficient and geographically aloof isolation. "We 
are thoroughly aroused," comes now the message 
of a deeply patriotic American, " and as determined 

as we have been patient All during 

the war I have been much depressed, but now there 
is a wonderful lightness of heart and an almost pas- 
sionate yearning for suffering. We have no right 
to be exempt." 

It is quite clear, then, that the American national 
consciousness, although it had come to feel that 
the time was nearly ripe for the co-operation of the 
country with the Entente Alliance, was stirred into a 
remarkable and almost unanimous determination 
that America should do her part, on account of 
several occasions, or contributory causes, likely to 
induce war, some of which had existed from the 
beginning, while others appeared more or less simul- 
taneously with the final ripening of the moment 
which has been spoken of above. 

These several occasions may be briefly set down 
as follows : — 

First, the faithless invasion of Belgium by the 
Germans, the atrocities that followed, and the 
callous and brutal oppression of the civil popula- 
tion. 

Second, the traditional fellowship between the 
United States and France. 

Third, the growing feeling of kinsman-like .sym- 
pathy with the British Empire as it suffered and 

13 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

sacrificed itself for the cause of liberty; especially, 
perhaps, the inspiring object-lesson shown by the 
liberal despatch of Canadian troops and supplies to 
Europe, together with the remarkable quickening of 
the Canadian national life that followed, and that 
was observed by thoughtful Americans with interest 
and admiration, perhaps even with something of 
envy. Immediate zeal and enthusiasm for the cause 
of the Allies was shown by thousands of Americans 
who personally enlisted in the Canadian contingent, 
the Foreign Legion in France, or elsewhere, for 
active service. As Lord Northcliffe has written in 
the Times, " If you take a map of the United States 
and go up and down the American lines in France 
you will find no city, great or small, which has not 
sent a flying man, a bomber, an artilleryman, a 
sniper, or a dispatch rider to help to destroy Prus- 
sian despotism. I put one question to a score of 
those whose mothers were not ashamed to raise them 
to be soldiers. I asked them why they had come. 
The reply of the American in France is the same 
every time, whether you meet him with the Canadian 
Army, the British Army, or the French Army. 
They all say words to this effect : ' The sort of 
thing that has been going on in Europe as the result 
of the horrible organised savagery of the Prussians 
has got to be stopped. We want to stop it before 
it reaches our own country. We have come over 
here to do it, and thank God, we know that we are 
helping to do it, and that it is to be thoroughly 
done.'" 

Many of the letters sent back home by these 
young soldiers, and since published, have been full 

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ENTERED THE WAR 

of similar fervour and enthusiasm, and have had no 
small influence in affecting the American public 
mind. The unusually inspiring poems of Alan 
Seeger, a young American who was killed in France 
in July, 19 1 6, might well be mentioned also in this 
connection. It is worth while noting that according 
to the latest reports from Washington the total 
number of Americans participating in the Great War 
as infantrymen, artillerymen, aviators. Red Cross 
workers, nurses, etc., will probably reach the number 
of one hundred thousand during the present 
summer. 

Fourth, the German propaganda in the United 
States, which pursued a course so increasingly 
blatant and mischievous as to disgust and alienate 
many minds towards whose conversion it was espe- 
cially directed. 

Fifth, the intricate system of German espionage 
in the United States, and the grave outrages com- 
mitted by agents of the German Government in con- 
nection with plots against public and private works 
of military importance. These proceedings became 
cumulatively sinister, until they, too, defeated their 
own ends. 

Sixth, the recklessly inhuman and illegal use of 
the submarine by the German Government and the 
eventual decision of that Government, despite 
the warnings and protests of America, to enter upon 
the course officially described as "unrestricted'' 
submarine warfare. 

Seventh, the culminating exposure of under- 
handed and indefensible German political methods, 
in the overtures discovered to have been made by 

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WHY THE UNITED STATES 

the German Government to Mexico, suggesting that 
in the event of war breaking out between Germany 
and the United States Mexico should receive finan- 
cial aid from the German Government, and should 
undertake the invasion of the United States, with 
the understanding also that Japan should be invited 
to break her faith with the Entente Allies and to 
declare war against the United States. 

Eighth, the wicked and wholesale attempt by 
the Turkish authorities to exterminate the Armenian 
people, Germany being a consenting partner. 

Ninth, the redemption of Russia from her 
deadening autocratic regime and her hopeful 
entrance upon her great experiment in democracy, 
which came at precisely the moment when the 
United States Government was making up its mind 
to participate in the war. It is important to note 
that the existence of the old governmental condi- 
tions in Russia had been a serious obstacle to 
American popular acceptance of the cause of the 
Allies. As James D. Whelpley has pointed out in 
The Fortnightly Review for May, 19 17, much of 
the German propaganda in the United ^tates took 
the form of anti-Russianism. "Tales of the vast 
resources of Russia and predictions as to the future 
economic greatness of that country fell upon deaf 
or prejudiced ears in America until the revolution 
swept away the autocratic form of government. Too 
much importance can hardly be given to this Rus- 
sian factor in determining the degree of support now 
given by America to the Allied cause, for recent 
events in Petrograd have made a tremendous appeal 
to cherished traditions and principles, and in a day 

16 



ENTERED THE WAR 

the formerly antagonistic Jewish forces have become 
reconciled to the idea of the United States of 
America as an Ally of a democratised Russian 
Empire." 

These contributory causes have been of varying 
degrees of importance, but each of them has served 
as a definite lesson, so to speak, in the national 
educational programme planned and fostered by the 
most sagacious American statesmen and publicists, 
from the President down. These lessons eventually 
transformed the perplexed and cautious America of 
19 14 into the one-minded, one-souled America of 
19 1 7. "At last," wrote the late Joseph H. Choate 
to Earl Grey on April 17th, 191 7, "at last Ameri- 
cans at home and abroad can hold up their heads 
with infinite pride. The whole nation is now lined 
up behind the President, and I think that you will 
hear no more about doubt or hesitation or dissent 
among us. I think that we may now forget all the 
past, and let bygones be bygones, and accept the 
President as our great leader for the war; and we 
must give him credit for one signal result of his 
watchful waiting, and that is, that he was waiting 
to see when the whole nation would be wrought up 
to the point which has now been reached, so that he 
could safely announce to the world our alliance with 
France and Great Britain without any practical dis- 
sent. I say alliance, because that is justified by his 
noble utterances. We must stand together now until 
victory is won, and I think that victory will be 
greatly hastened by the entrance of the United 
States into the conflict. As you know, I have 
thought from the beginning that, while for the time 

17 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

being we might better serve the cause of the Allies 
by remaining neutral and supplying all that we 
could in the way of arms and munitions, and, I am 
happy to say, some men, as our neutral right was; 
that nevertheless v/hen, by entering into the war with 
all our might and with the aid of all our boundless 
resources, we could help to bring it to an end in 
the right way by the complete suppression of Prus- 
sian militarism, and the triumph of civilisation, it 
would be our duty to do so. That time has now 
come, and I am happy to think that our great nation 
has acted upon the same thought, and has been 
really true to all its great traditions." The 
American people "came into this gigantic strife," 
said the United States Ambassador, Walter H. 
Page, at an immense demonstration of the British 
Workers' League, held in Hyde Park, London, on 
May 27th, 191 7, "not because they were bound by 
any treaties, or even any undertakings, or had any- 
thing to gain from it except to come as the sup- 
port of liberty itself." 

The declaration of the state of war with 
Germany was passed in the United States Senate by 
a vote of 82 to 6, and in the House of Representa- 
tives by a vote of ^"j^, to 50. It was an impressive 
and conclusive vote. But the great process of 
national education which had prepared for it could 
never have been conceived or completed were it not 
for the steady operation of the fundamental cause 
which brought America into the war,, namely, her 
devoted attachment to the belief that all humanity 
is entitled to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness." ' In his Proclamation of April 15th, 19 17, 

18 



ENTERED THE WAR 

addressed to the American people, President 
Wilson asserts that so far as he can see "there is not 
a single selfish element in the cause we are fighting 
for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish 
to be the rights of mankind, and for the future peace 
and security of the world. To do this great thing 
worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves 
to the service without regard to profit or material 
advantage, and with an energy and intelligence that 
will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We 
must realise to the full how great the task is and 
how many things, how many kinds and elements of 
capacity and service and self-sacrifice, it involves." 
"There are those in the United States," says the 
American journalist, Gilbert V. Seldes, in his book 
entitled The United States and the War, " who do 
not see the goal of all good endeavours in economic 
penetrations and increased productions, nor the 
happy life in the meaningless labours of scientific 
management. They are careless of any supremacy 
in trade which does not bring the free play of human 
activity, and they refuse to have freedom given or 
withheld as an incentive to labour." And again he 
writes : "We have been told, with an insistence we 
resented a little, that the Entente had our safety in 
its keeping, because a German victory would leave 
us Germany's victim in the next war. But our safety 
is not the most precious thing which England guards 
for us. She is, in every serious sense, the guardian 
of our faith. That the good American knows, and 
that he is trying to teach his country to understand. 
It is simply the faith that a democratic people can 
fully and finally dedicate and organise itself to meet 

19 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

the power of undemocratic discipline. The critical 
impatience with which the United States watched 
the long, terrible process by which Great Britain 
gathered her strength was not wholly kind ; but for 
the good American it was more than generous. He 
knew that if the process was long, the result must 
be good, or there would be neither safety nor 
security for his country except in immediate prepara- 
tion to lead the life of Prussians, lest Prussia over- 
come the country by force. It is from this change 
of life, more than from invasion of arms, that 
England saved the United States. She has justified 
the faith of democracy." 

It is fitting that this effort to review the condi- 
tions that have led the United States into an active 
partnership with the Entente Alliance should con- 
clude with the quotation in its entirety of the Pre- 
sident's memorable address to Congress. President 
Wilson is an educator in temper and training alike, 
and he has sought, sometimes apparently with less 
firmness and vigour than the "stalwarts'' could have 
desired, but always with a persistent belief in those 
root qualities of the American character that make 
for justice, honour and liberty, to imbue his country- 
men with confidence in the sobriety of his official 
judgment, and to lead them into a self -consistent 
national attitude in relation to the war. He has 
hoped, with the pacificists, that the United States 
could manage to avoid war, but he has not ruled 
war. out, like the pacificists, as something to be 
avoided at all hazards. Indeed, he saw clearly, long 
before the majority of his countrymen saw it, that if 
America were to remain America, she must 

20 



ENTERED THE WAR 

eventually enter the war. When the time came to 
realise and announce that necessity publicly, the 
country was ready for the great crisis-moment, and 
accepted it not merely with equanimity but with 
positive relief and enthusiasm. 

It is obvious that none of President Wilson's 
State papers touching- the war can be properly or 
even intelligently interpreted hereafter save in the 
light of the gravely considered and gravely 
delivered address made before the assembled 
Congress on the night of April 2nd, 19 17, and 
of the mental processes and changes which 
led to the framing of that address. It is an 
eloquent and effective summary of the Ameri- 
can position in the world and in the war, 
and a complete vindication, not, perhaps, neces- 
sarily of America's long forbearance and delay, 
but of the virile, unselfish, and idealistic qualities 
of the American character. 



21 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 
ADDRESS 

OF THE 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 

Delivered at a Joint Session of the 

Two Houses of Congress, 

April 2. 1917. 

Gentlemen of the Congress : — 

I have called the Congress into extraordinary 
session because there are serious, very serious, 
choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, 
which it was neither right nor constitutionally per- 
missible that I should assume the responsibility of 
making. 

On the third of February last I officially laid 
before you the extraordinary announcement of the 
Imperial German Government that on and after the 
first day of February it was its purpose to put aside 
all restraints of law or of humanity and use its sub- 
marines to sink every vessel that sought to approach 
either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the 
western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports con- 
trolled by the enemies of Germany within the Medi- 
terranean. 

That had seemed to be the object of the German 
submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since 
April of last year the Imperial Government had 
somewhat restrained the commanders of its under- 
sea craft in conformity with itr promise then given 
to us that passenger boats shou/d not be sunk, and 
that due warning would be given to all other vessels 

22 



ENTERED THE WAR 

which its submarines might seek to destroy when 
no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and 
care taken that their crews were given at least a 
fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. 

The precautions taken were meagre and hap- 
hazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance 
after instance in the progress of the cruel and un- 
manly business; but a certain degree of restraint 
was observed. 

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. 
Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their 
character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, 
have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without 
warning and without thought of help or mercy for 
those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals 
along with those of belligerents. 

Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to 
the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, 
though the latter were provided with safe-conduct 
through the prescribed areas by the German Govern- 
ment itself and were distinguished by unmistakable 
marks of identity, have been sunk with the same 
reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such 
things would in fact be done by any Government 
that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices 
of civilised nations. International law had its origin 
in the attempt to set up some law which would be 
respected and observed upon the seas, where no 
nation had right of domination and where lay the 
free highways of the world. 

By painful stage after stage has that law been 
built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after 

23 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

all was accomplished that could be accomplished, 
but always with a clear view, at least, of what the 
heart and conscience of mankind demanded. 

This minimum of right the German Government 
has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and 
necessity, and because it had no weapons which it 
could use at sea except those w^hich it is impossible 
to employ, as it is employing them, without throwing 
to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect 
for the understandings that are supposed to underlie 
the intercourse of the world. 

I am not now thinking of the loss of property 
involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of 
the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives 
of non-combatants, men, women and children, en- 
gaged in pursuits which have always, even in the 
darkest periods of modern history, been deemed 
innocent and- legitimate. Property can be paid for : 
the lives of peaceful and innocent people can- 
not be. 

The present German submarine warfare against 
commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war 
against all nations. American ships haA^e been sunk, 
American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred 
us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people 
of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk 
and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. 
There has been no discrimination. The challenge 
is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for 
itself how it will meet it. 

The choice we make for ourselves must be made 
with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness 
of judgment befitting our character and our motives 

24 



ENTERED THE WAR 

as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. 
Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious 
assertion of the physical might of the nation, but 
only the vindication of right, of human right, of 
which we are a single champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the twenty- 
sixth of February last I thought it would suffice to 
assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use 
the seas against unlawful interference, our right to 
keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But 
armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. 

Because submarines are in effect outlaws when 
used as the German submarines have been used 
against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend 
ships against their attacks as the law of nations has 
assumed that merchantmen would defend them- 
selves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft 
giving chase upon the open sea. It is common 
prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, 
indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they 
have shown their own intention. They must be 
dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. 

The German Government denies the right of 
neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea 
which it has proscribed, even in the defence of rights 
which no modern publicist has ever questioned their 
right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that 
the armed guards which we have placed on our mer- 
chant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law 
and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. 

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; 
in such circumstances and in the face of such pre- 
tensions it is worse than ineffectual ; it is likely only 

25 



WHY TEE UNITED STATES 

to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is vir- 
tually certain to draw us into the war without either 
the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. 

There is one choice we cannot make, we are 
incapable of making : we will not choose the path of 
submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our 
nation and our people to be ignored or violated. 
The wrongs against which we now array ourselves 
are not common wrongs ; they cut to the very roots 
of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even 
tragical character of the step I am taking and of the 
grave responsibilities which it involves, but in un- 
hesitating obedience to what I deem my constitu- 
tional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the 
recent course of the Imperial German Government 
to be in fact nothing less than war against the 
Government and people of the United States; that 
it formally accept the status of belligerent which has 
thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediately 
steps not only to put the country in a more thorough 
state of defence, but also to exert all its power and 
employ all its resources to bring the -Government 
of the German Empire to terms and end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve 
the utmost practicable co-operation in counsel and 
action with the Governments now at war with Ger- 
many, and, as incident to that, the extension to those 
Governments of the most liberal financial credits, 
in order that our resources may, so far as possible, 
be added to theirs. It will involve the organisation 
and mobilisation of all the material resources of the 
country to supply the material of war and serve 

26 



ENTERED THE WAR 

the incidental needs of the nation in the most abun- 
dant and yet the most economical and efficient way 
possible. 

It will involve the immediate full equipment of 
the navy in all respects, but particularly in supply- 
ing it with the best means of dealing with the 
enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate 
addition to the armed forces of the United States 
already provided for by law in case of war, of at least 
500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen 
upon the principle of universal liability to service, 
and also the authorisation of subsequent additional 
increments of equal force so soon as they may be 
needed and can be handled in training. 

It will involve also, of course, the granting of 
adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I 
hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by 
the present generation, by well-conceived taxation. 
I say sustained so far as may be equitably by 
taxation because it seems to me that it would be 
most unwise to base the credits which will now be 
necessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our 
duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people 
so far as we may against the very serious hardships 
and evils which would be likely to arise out of the 
inflation which would be produced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these 
things are to be accomplished we should keep con- 
stantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as 
possible in our own preparation and in the equipment 
of our own military forces with the duty — for it will 
be a very practical duty — of supplying the nations 
already at war with Germany with the materials 

27 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

which they can obtain only from us by our assist- 
ance. They are in the field, and we should help 
them in every way to be effective there. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through 
the several executive departments of the Govern- 
ment, for the consideration of your committees, 
measures for the accomplishment of the several 
objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your 
pleasure to deal with them as having been framed 
after very careful thought by the branch of the 
Government upon which the responsibility of con- 
ducting the war and safeguarding the nation will 
most directly fall. 

While we do these things— these deeply 
momentous things— let us be very clear, and make 
very clear to all the world, what our motives and our 
objects are. My own thought has not been driven 
from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy 
events of the last two months, and I do not believe 
that the thought of the nation has been altered or 
clouded by them. 

I have exactly the same things in mind now that 
I had in mind when I addressed the^Senate on the 
twenty-second of January last; the same that I had 
in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third 
of February and on the twenty-sixth of February. 
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the prin- 
ciples of peace and justice in the life of the world 
against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up 
among the really free and self-governed peoples of 
the world such a concert of purpose and action as 
will henceforth insure the observance of those prin- 
ciples. 

28 



ENTERED THE WAR 

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable 
where the peace of the world is involved and the 
freedom of its people, and the menace to that peace 
and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic 
governments backed by organised force which is 
controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of 
their people. We have seen the last of neutrality 
in such circumstances. 

We are at the beginning of an age in which it 
will be insisted that the same standards of conduct 
and of responsibility for wrong-doing shall be 
observed among nations and their Governments that 
are observed among the individual citizens of 
civilised States. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. 
We have no feeling toward them but one of sym- 
pathy and friendship. It vvas not upon their impulse 
that their Government acted in entering this war. 
It was not with their previous knowledge or 
approval. 

It was a war determined upon as wars used to 
be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when 
peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and 
wars were provoked and waged in the interest of 
dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who 
were accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns 
and tools. 

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour 
States- with spies, or set the course of intrigue to 
bring about some critical posture of affairs which will 
give them an opportunity to strike and make con- 
quest, i. Such designs can be successfully worked 

2Q 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

out only under cover and where no one has the 
right to ask questions. 

Cunningly contrived plans of deception or 
aggression carried, it may be, from generation to 
generation, can be worked out and kept from the 
light only within the privacy of courts or behind the 
carefully guarded confidence of a narrow, privileged 
class. They are happily impossible where public 
opinion commands and insists upon full information 
concerning all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be main- 
tained except by a partnership of democratic 
nations. No autocratic Government could be 
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its 
covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partner- 
ship of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; 
the plotting of inner circles who could plan what 
they would and render account to no one would be 
a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free 
peoples can hold their purpose and their honour 
steady to a common end and prefer the interests of 
mankind to any narrow interest of their own. 

Does not every American feel that assurance has 
been added to our hope for the future peace of the 
world by the wonderful and heartening things that 
have been happening within the last few weeks in 
Russia? Russia was known by those who know her 
best to have been always in fact democratic at heart 
in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the 
intimate relationships of her people that spoke their 
natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. 

The autocracy that crowned the summit of her 
political structure, long as it had stood, and terrible 

30 



ENTERED THE WAR 

as was the reality of its power, was not, in fact, 
Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now 
it has been shaken off and the great, generous Rus- 
sian people have been added in all their native 
majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for 
freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. 
Here is a fit partner for a league of honour. 

One of the things that have served to convince 
us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could 
never be our friend is that from the very outset of 
the present war it has filled our unsuspecting com- 
munities and even our offices of Government with 
spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot 
against our national unity and counsel, our peace 
within and without, our industries and our com- 
merce. 

Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here 
even before the war began ; and it is unhappily not 
a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our 
courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more 
than once come perilously near to disturbing the 
peace and dislocating the industries of the country 
have been carried on at the instigation, with the 
support, and even under the personal direction of 
official agents of the Imperial Government ac- 
credited to the Government of the United States. 

Even in checking these things and trying to 
extirpate them, we have sought to put the most 
generous interpretation possible upon them, because 
we know that their source lay, not in any hostile 
feeling or purpose of the German people toward 
us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we 
ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a 

31 



WHY THE V NIT ED STATES 

Government that did what it pleased and told its 
people nothing. But they have played their part 
in serving to convince us at least that that Govern- 
ment entertains no real friendship for us and means 
to act against our peace and security at its con- 
venience. That it means to stir up enemies against 
us at our very doors the intercepted Note to the 
German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent 
evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile pur- 
pose because we know that in such a Government, 
following such methods, we can never have a friend ; 
and that in the presence of its organised power, 
always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what 
purpose, there can be no assured security of the 
democratic Governments of the world. 

We are now about to accept gage of battle with 
this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, 
spend the whole force of the nation to check and 
nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, 
now that we see the facts with no veil of false pre- 
tence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace 
of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, 
the German peoples included; for the rights of 
nations great and small and the privilege of men 
everywhere to choose their way of life and of 
obedience. The world must be made safe for 
democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the 
tested foundations of political liberty. 

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for 
ourselves, no material compensation for the sacri- 
fices we shall freely make. We are but one of the 

32 



ENTERED THE WAR 

champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be 
satisfied when those rights have been made as secure 
as the faith and the freedom of the nations can 
make them. 

Just because we fight without rancour and with- 
out selfish object/seeking nothing for ourselves but 
what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we 
shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as 
belligerents without passion, and ourselves observe 
with proud punctilio the principles of right and of 
fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

I have said nothing of the Governments allied 
with the Imperial Government of Germany because 
they have not made war upon us or challenged us 
to defend our right and our honour. The Austro- 
Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its 
unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reck- 
less and lawless submarine warfare adopted now 
without disguise by the Imperial German Govern- 
ment, and it has, therefore, not been possible for 
this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the 
Ambassador recently accredited to this Government 
by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria- 
liungary; but that Government has not actually 
engaged in warfare against citizens of the United 
States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the 
present at least, of postponing a discussion of our 
relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter 
this war only where we are clearly forced into it 
because there are no other means of defending our 
rights. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves 
as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness 

33 



WHY THE UNITED STATES 

because we act without animus, not in enmity toward 
a people or with the desire to bring any injury or 
disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposi- 
tion to an irresponsible Government which has 
thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of 
right and is running amuck. 

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of 
the German people, and shall desire nothing so 
much as the early re-establishment of intimate rela- 
tions of mutual advantage between us, however hard 
it may be for them, for the time being, to believe 
that this is spoken from our hearts. 

We have borne with their present Government 
through all these bitter months because of that 
friendship, exercising a patience and forbearance 
which would otherwise have been impossible. We 
shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove 
that friendship in our daily attitude and action 
toward the millions of men and women of German 
birth and native sympathy who live among us and 
share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it 
toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours 
and to the Government in the hour of test. 

They are, most of them, as true and loyal 
Americans as if they had never known any other 
fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand 
with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may 
be of a different m.ind and purpose. 

If there should be disloyalty it will be dealt with 
with a firm hand of stern repression; but if it lifts 
its head at all it will lift it only here and there, 
and without countenance except from a lawless and 
malignant few. 

34 



ENTERED THE WAR 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentle- 
men of the Congress, which I have performed in 
thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many 
months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It 
is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people 
into war — into the most terrible and disastrous of 
all Vv^ars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the 
balance. 

But the right is more precious than peace, and 
we shall fight for the things which we have always 
carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the 
right of those who submit to authority to have a 
voice in their own government, for the rights and 
liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion 
of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall 
bring peace and safety to all nations and make the 
world itself at last free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our 
fortunes, everything that we are and everything that 
we have, with the pride of those who know that the 
day has come when America is privileged to spend 
her blood and her might for the principles that gave 
her birth and happiness and the peace which she 
has treasured. God helping her, she can do no 
other. 



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